“On the Beach.” In the consulting world that expression means you
are not involved in activity that is billable.
In other words, you are not directly creating revenue for your company. And that is always a dangerous place to be if
you want to stay employed. An early
mentor of mine told me to “never get removed from the real revenue stream.” For several years I lived by that advice
through a career in sales, but I knew there were also important positions
within an organization that by design, were not directly revenue producing. Yes, we’re talking about the staff that
supports the revenue generators. The
accounting term often used is “overhead.”
Overhead expenses may apply
to a variety of operational categories, including marketing for some
organizations. Most marketers though,
including me now, hate the thought of being labeled overhead. You are simply not going to find us On the
Beach. That’s why marketing ROI metrics
are always top-of-mind. In fact, I
wouldn’t be surprised if we spend more time trying to figure out how to measure
the results of our activity than actually creating campaigns. The continuous struggle to cost justify every
marketing move is often a major reason for the gap that exists between sales
and marketing.

I’ve spent a significant amount of time in both disciplines so I’m
going to offer five key points that have helped me “bridge the gap” with my
sales counterpart. Keep in mind that my
point-of-view is coming from the B2B world and may not apply to all of you.

1. Listen to and show some empathy for
the people who carry the quota. I’m
fortunate that my background makes this first point easy. I have both inside and field-based sales
experience as well as direct and indirect channel experience. I’ve covered a territory as both an
individual contributor as well as a sales manager and I know what it feels like
to be directly in front of the customer and responsible for the quota. That experience creates immediate credibility
that is priceless with my sales counterpart.
I listen to and am empathetic with the sales organization, and they know
my feelings are sincere.

2. I don’t tell sales how to do their job. A sales person who can cover their quota year
after year is worth their weight in gold.
The last thing you need to do is to suggest that you (marketing)
understand the customer or the sales environment they’re dealing with better
than they do. In other words, I don’t walk
around acting like the company know-it-all.

3. Keep your sales force informed. When I was covering a territory it used to irritate
me when HQ would send content (email blasts, direct mail, etc.) into my
territory without telling me. In fact,
on one occasion it created a problem because I had a proposal ready to close
and I didn’t want any more messaging to confuse the decision maker.

4. Lead generation and lead nurturing are
music to their ears. Yes, we joke about
leads being “qualified and ready-to-buy right now.” But in the B2B solution selling space where
sales cycles are long and deal values are high they are not realistically expecting
that type of lead. They want help
keeping the brand top-of-mind and an increase in “footprint influence” throughout
their accounts.

5. I lead from the front and teach by
example. Social networking for sales
results is important in today’s business environment because social media has the potential to influence the
customer experience when employees are able to initiate conversations on social
platforms and begin building trust-based relationships throughout the customer
lifecycle. For that reason I’m very
active on social media demonstrating by example how the right content distributed
consistently through the various social platforms builds credibility, trust and
conversations that start sales motions.